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The text of the New Testament cannot be trusted.

Mark A. Pearson

Ancient texts are studied in a formal and well-defined manner that allows confidence in the practice.

The superabundance of New Testament manuscripts enables a high degree of accuracy in analyzing their authenticity.

New Testament documents have been shown to be extremely reliable when analyzed by text critics.

There are a few New Testament texts with significant differences among manuscripts, but none of these undermine or contradict any fundamental Christian beliefs.

How can you believe the New Testament when it is undergone so many changes, additions, and revisions over time?

This objection assumes that today's version of the New Testament is a far cry from the original, having been passed down in a manner similar to the children's game of telephone.

Humans were involved in the transmission process after all, and humans are fallible.

More than that, humans routinely push agendas.

Someone could have altered the words of Scripture to make the masses believe in the Trinity, or think Jesus is divine.

In fact, we are told so many mistakes and changes were introduced over the centuries that there are now more errors than words among the manuscripts of the New Testament.

Thus, skeptics often dismiss it as being utterly corrupt from start to finish, giving us no hope of ever knowing what it initially said.

In truth, such claims are highly sensational and misleading. They depend more on baseless conspiracies than on demonstrable facts.

So how do we know the text of the New Testament remains reliable? The answer is simple.

We should consider how ancient texts are studied, the evidence regarding ancient copies of the New Testament, and the significance of the differences among these copies.

In doing this, we find reason for great confidence that today's New Testament is a faithful and accurate representation of what the authors themselves wrote.

The art and science of recovering ancient documents. What is textual criticism?

Today, exact replicas of books are printed by the thousands. The cut and paste feature of digital content allows for perfect copying.

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